Abstract:

During the Mesozoic and the Cenozoic, two important blocks in East China, the North China and South China blocks, were exactly a center surrounded by westward subduction of the Pacific Plate, northward subduction of the India Plate beneath the Eurasian Plate and southward subduction of the Central Asian Orogen due to Mesozoic Okhotsk Sea. It was a convergent center of the three global tectonic domains. Under the same setting of the superconvergence, two distinct structures are the extensional structures in the MesoCenozoic Bohai Bay Basin in the Eastern Block of the North China Craton and the compressional structures in the center of the South China Block characterized by shortening, thrusting and decollement. On the basis of our 10year research on the formation of the Bohai Bay Basin and the post2006 research on the intracontinental tectonic system of the South China Block, we focus on the continental dynamics of distinct Mesozoic to Cenozoic deformations in North and South China. It is revealed that the deep structures between North and South China are distinctly different according to the tomographic images although they have the same shallow setting of super convergence.  Therefore, they possibly have different deformation mechanism. It is suggested that the continental dynamics should focus on the structures of deep Earth to reveal the relationship between deep and shallow structures.

Key words: Bohai Bay Basin, North China Craton, South China Block, deep tectonic process, continental dynamics